The Morning After: New York’s governor signs a weakened right-to-repair bill

New York governor Kathy Hochul has finally signed a right-to-repair bill into law, over half a year since the state legislature was passed. Representatives for Microsoft and Apple pressed Hochul’s office for changes, as well as industry association TechNet, which represents many notable tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Dell and HP. Critics say the amendments will weaken the law’s effectiveness. The bill’s revised language excludes enterprise electronics, like devices used in schools and hospitals. Home appliances, motor vehicles, medical devices and off-road equipment were also previously exempted.

Whatever aims the right-to-repair bill had when first proposed have been weakened. Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG), a collective of consumer rights organizations, said in a statement to Engadget: “Such changes could limit the benefits for school computers and most products currently in use.” It continued: “The bill now excludes certain smartphone circuit boards from parts the manufacturers are required to sell and requires repair shops to post unwieldy warranty language.”

– Mat Smith

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The biggest stories you might have missed

TikTok will be banned on most US federal government devices

Included in a mammoth $1.7 trillion bill that President Biden just signed.

TikTok will be outlawed on almost all devices issued by the federal government after lawmakers passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill. Officials recently added the No TikTok on Government Devices Act (what a name) to the bill, which the Senate unanimously approved last week. The mammoth 4,155-page legislation was fast-tracked to avoid a partial government shutdown. It will fund the government through September. The legislation requires the Biden administration to establish rules to remove TikTok from government devices by mid-February. The bill carved out exceptions for elected officials, congressional staff, law enforcement agents and other officials. However, the House of Representatives separately banned TikTok on devices it owns and manages.

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Samsung’s new smart fridge has a massive 32-inch display

Think of it like a smart TV with a fridge attached to it.

TMA
Samsung

CES is nearly here, which means we’re once again writing about refrigerators. With its Family Hub Plus, Samsung has boosted the touch display size to 32 inches from 21 inches, although it’s still a vertical screen. Samsung has added support for Google Photos, along with the OneDrive integration seen on past models. There’s also a new SmartThings hub so you can control multiple smart home devices from your… kitchen, including robot vacuums, air conditioning, lighting and more. It also supports Amazon’s Your Essentials service, letting you order groceries and other products directly from the touchscreen. Those groceries go inside.

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The EV revolution became an eventuality in 2022

It’s been a busy year for the industry.

It’s been a decade since the first Tesla EV made its commercial debut and the electrification of American automotive society began in earnest. Over the past ten years as battery capacities have grown and range anxieties have shrunk, electric vehicles have become a daily sight in most parts of the country. Now, virtually every notable automaker on the planet has jumped on the electric bandwagon with sizable investments in battery and production technologies and pledges to electrify their lineups within a decade or so.

Not even recent years’ production slowdowns and supply chain disruptions brought on by the COVID pandemic managed to stall the industry’s momentum. The International Energy Agency in January reported that EVs had managed to triple their market share between 2019 and 2021 with 6.6 million units being sold globally last year. And as eventful as 2022 turned out to be, 2023 and beyond could be even bigger for the EV industry. We’re expecting EV debuts including the VW ID.3; the Lucid Gravity, Polestar 3, Jeep (one of four!) and Honda’s Prologue SUVs.

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Google Voice now flags suspected spam calls

Google Voice has made it easier to filter out spammers trying to call your number. The tech giant has announced that the service will now flag suspected spam calls and will clearly label them as such, complete with a big red exclamation mark. Spam calls and texts have been a huge issue for a years, and they aren’t going away anytime soon — according to the FCC, consumers in the US receive approximately 4 billion robocalls per month and that Americans had lost nearly $30 billion to scam calls in 2021. Google says the feature was designed to help protect you “from unwanted calls and potentially harmful scams.”

The new label that says “suspected spam caller” will show up not just on the incoming call screen, but also in call history for future reference. If you confirm that the call is spam, any future call from that number will head straight to voicemail, and all its call history entries will be sent to the spam folder. But if you confirm that the number is legitimate and isn’t a spam caller, the warning will never be displayed for it again. Here’s what the label would look like on the call screen:

Google
Google

Google uses the same artificial intelligence that’s in charge of identifying spam calls across its ecosystem to pinpoint spam callers for this feature. Apparently, that AI has been filtering out billions of spam calls a month for the tech giant. To note, the new label will only appear if your spam filter setting under Security is turned off. If it’s on, all calls Google suspects to be spam are sent to voicemail from the start.

JLab’s smallest earbuds yet still cover the basics for $39

JLab has consistently produced some of the best cheap earbuds over the last few years. The company offers solid performance and decent sound quality for well under $50 in some models. For 2023, JLab is taking things a step further in multiple ways with its smallest true wireless earbuds yet and also its first premium noise-canceling set. What’s more, the company is jumping into the over-the-counter hearing aid market with two options with “discreet” designs. 

First, the $39 JBuds Mini are 30-percent smaller than JLab’s Go Air Pop that debuted in 2021. They aren’t the company’s cheapest model, but despite the tiny stature, the JBuds Mini still pack on-board controls, Bluetooth multipoint connectivity and over six hours of listening on a charge (over 20 hours with the case). The charging case is also quite small — about the size of a car key fob — and has an integrated key ring loop. 

On the higher end, the $199 Epic Air Lab Edition earbuds are JLab’s first hybrid dual driver design and, as you might expect, the company is calling them its best-sounding option to date. Equipped with active noise cancellation (ANC) and ambient sound mode, the Epic Air Lab Edition also offers touch controls, Bluetooth multipoint and over 54 hours of use when you factor in the wireless charging case. The company says there will be multiple ANC modes available in its app and a USB-C dongle will offer low-latency Bluetooth LE audio for video and games. 

JLab hearing aid
JLab OTC Hearing Aid prototype. 
JLab

Now that over-the-counter hearing aids have been approved by the FDA, you can expect to see a lot of headphone companies entering that market. JLab has two models that will debut in 2023: the OTC Hearing Aid and the Self-Fitting OTC Hearing Aid. The former is $99 while the pricing on the latter is TBD. The company says both will be compatible with iOS and Android with “impressive” battery life. Details are scarce for now, but we expect a lot more info before these two hearing aids arrive later in the year. And based on the early renders, at least one of them will look like a set of JLab true wireless earbuds.

JLab says all of these new products, which will be the focus of its CES showcase, will be available during Q3 2023.

TikTok will be banned on most US federal government devices

TikTok will be outlawed on almost all devices issued by the federal government after lawmakers passed a $1.7 trillion spending bill. Officials crammed the No TikTok on Government Devices Act, which the Senate unanimously approved in mid-December, into the mammoth 4,155-page omnibus bill. The spending package was fast tracked in order to avoid a partial government shutdown. It will fund the government through September.

The Senate voted 68-29 to pass the bill on December 22nd. The House approved it on Friday with a vote of 225-201. On the same day, President Joe Biden signed a stopgap bill that funded the government for another week in order to avert a shutdown until the omnibus bill landed on his desk. Today, President Biden signed the bill into law.

The legislation requires the Biden administration to establish rules to remove TikTok from government devices by mid-February. The bill carved out exceptions for elected officials, congressional staff, law enforcement agents and other officials. However, the House of Representatives separately banned TikTok on devices it owns and manages.

Earlier this month, FBI Director Chris Wray warned that China could use the app (which is owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance) to collect data on users. Some attempts have been made, including in the last few weeks, to prohibit TikTok in the US entirely. Several states have banned TikTok from government devices, including Georgia, South Dakota, Maryland and Texas. Indiana has sued TikTok over alleged security and child safety issues.

TikTok has attempted to soothe US lawmakers’ concerns that the app could be used for spying purposes. Since June, it has been directing all traffic from the country to Oracle servers based domestically. TikTok and ByteDance said they’d delete US user data from their own servers in the US and Singapore. In August, Oracle began a review of TikTok’s algorithms and content moderation systems.

As Congress was voting on the bill, news broke that ByteDance fired four employees (two in the US and two in China) who accessed the TikTok data of US journalists. The workers were allegedly trying to find the sources of leaks to the reporters.

The omnibus bill includes other tech-related provisions, including more funding for federal antitrust officials. In addition, the package incorporates the Computers for Veterans and Students Act. This requires the government to hand over certain surplus computers to nonprofits. The systems will be repaired and/or refurbished, then distributed to schools, homeschooled students, veterans, seniors and others in need.

There’s also another $1.8 billion in new funding to implement the CHIPS and Science Act, which aims to boost domestic production of semiconductors. The omnibus bill earmarks $25.4 billion for NASA — 5.6 percent more than the agency received in fiscal year 2022, but less than the $26 billion the White House asked for. The National Science Foundation will get $9.9 billion, an increase of 12 percent. The National Institute of Standards and Technology and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will receive increases of 32 percent (up to $1.6 billion) and 17.5 percent ($761 million), respectively.

New York’s governor signs watered-down right-to-repair bill

Almost seven months after the state legislature overwhelmingly passed a right-to-repair bill, New York governor Kathy Hochul has signed it into law. But Hochul only greenlit the bill after the legislature agreed to some changes. Hochul wrote in a memo that the legislation, as it was originally drafted, “included technical issues that could put safety and security at risk, as well as heighten the risk of injury from physical repair projects.” The governor said the modifications addressed these issues, but critics say the amendments will weaken the law’s effectiveness.

“This legislation would enhance consumer options in the repair markets by granting them greater access to the parts, tools and documents needed for repairs,” Hochul wrote. “Encouraging consumers to maximize the lifespan of their devices through repairs is a laudable goal to save money and reduce electronic waste.”

The changes strip out the bill’s requirement for “original equipment manufacturers [or OEMs] to provide to the public any passwords, security codes or materials to override security features.” OEMs will also be able to bundle “assemblies of parts” instead of just the specific component actually needed for a DIY repair if “the risk of improper installation heightens the risk of injury.” 

The rules will only apply to devices that are originally built and used or sold in New York for the first time after July 1st. There’s also an exemption for “digital products that are the subject of business-to-business or business-to-government sales and that otherwise are not offered for sale by retailers.”

As Ars Technica reported earlier this month, representatives for Microsoft and Apple pressed Hochul’s office for changes. So did industry association TechNet, which represents many notable tech companies, including Amazon, Google, Dell, HP and Engadget parent Yahoo.

As a result, the bill’s revised language excludes enterprise electronics, such as those that schools, hospitals, universities and data centers rely on, as iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens wrote in a blog post. Home appliances, motor vehicles, medical devices and off-road equipment were previously exempted.

“Such changes could limit the benefits for school computers and most products currently in use,” Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG), a collective of consumer rights organizations, said in a statement to Engadget. “Even more troubling, the bill now excludes certain smartphone circuit boards from parts the manufacturers are required to sell, and requires repair shops to post unwieldy warranty language.”

“We knew it was going to be difficult to face down the biggest and wealthiest companies in the world,” PIRG right to repair director Nathan Proctor said. “But, though trimmed down, a new Right to Repair law was signed. Now our work remains to strengthen this law and pass others until people have what they need to fix their stuff.”

As The Verge notes, repair technician and right-to-repair advocate Louis Rossmann said the changes have watered down the law to the point where it’s “functionally useless.” Rossmann, who spent seven years trying to get the bill passed, called Hochul’s assertion that the changes were necessary to include protections from physical harm and security risks “bullshit,” citing a Federal Trade Commission report on the issue.

The right-to-repair movement has picked up steam over the last couple of years. Ahead of expected legislation coming into force, companies such as Google, Apple, Samsung and Valve started providing repair manuals and selling parts for some of their products.

Last year, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that aimed at bolstering competition in the US, including in the tech industry. Among other measures, it called on the FTC to ban “anticompetitive restrictions on using independent repair shops or doing DIY repairs of your own devices and equipment.”